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Kim Gregory shares her extraordinary path in the greening of Greenwich

By Anne W. Semmes

Kim Gregory takes time out in the Greenwich Land Trust greenhouse. Photo by Anne W. Semmes

In the 25 years since Kim Gregory planted herself in Greenwich, she has been working nonstop to connect its citizenry with nature and show them how to protect it. Recently she was seen with a Santa hat on at the Greenwich Botanical Center for an event she pulled together with the Center, where she serves on the board, the Greenwich Conservation Commission, and Waste Free Greenwich, to lure Christmas shoppers into some “Sustainable Shopping with Santa.”

Kim Gregory, second from left, brings together Happiness Is owner Christine Salazar on the right and Sentinel reporter Anne W. Semmes on her left for a Santa photo at the Sustainable Shopping Event at the Greenwich Botanical Center. Chuan Ding at Glenville Photo

If it’s in the fall you might find her over at the Greenwich Land Trust checking on its pollinator plot, collecting native seeds to be propagated over the winter, then planted in the spring in three additional pollinator plots at the Audubon Center, Greenwich Botanical Center (GBC), and the Town of Greenwich’s Babcock Preserve. “It’s just this constant pushing back invasives,” she says of her Pollinator Project she kicked off in 2015 with pollinator potlucks that initially funded these plots.

Sustainable wrapping of repurposed fabric and ribbons with forest floor findings courtesy of Greenwich Country Day School and Greenwich Conservation Commission. Chuan Ding at Glenville Photo

But with Gregory’s work as conservation head at the Greenwich Garden Club (GGC) those plots are now managed by the GGC’s Greenwich Green effort Gregory launched in 2018 to engage the greater Greenwich community on the management of invasive species, and the preservation of native pollinators. “We like to attribute the success of Greenwich Grown and our pollinator projects,” says Gregory, “to our collaboration with all of our conservation partners plus our local businesses, Sam Bridge and Troy Garden Nurseries – and Happiness Is for contributing food to our pollinator potlucks, and The Study Fine Wine for providing organic wine tastings then donating portion of proceeds from wine sales back to our pollinator plots.”

Kim Gregory at work with milkweed propagation in the greenhouse of the Greenwich Land Trust. Contributed photo.

Add to that Gregory’s introducing to the town its Pollinator Pathways after she and friend Urling Searle discovered the concept two years ago in the Northeast. Its originator had dreamed, says Gregory, “What if we could connect all these [pollinator pathway] corridors.” This became Gregory’s dream, and now has been embraced by the Town as run by Aleksandra Moch of the Conservation Commission. “It’s really thriving,” Gregory says. She points to that newly painted mural on the Post Road across from the high school. “That mural controversy really brought attention to the Pollinator Pathways.”

The truth is Gregory came to be planted in Greenwich “kicking and screaming. Greenwich could not be further away from Gatzke, Minnesota,” she says of her hometown near the Canadian border where she grew up on a farm. “I just couldn’t envision raising children here. I was very intimidated by Greenwich.” And after the first year with husband Grant, a town native, she felt the same. Husband Grant found the answer. “He ran out and bought Stag Hill Farm, which is just this little barn on Stag Lane.” With her horses ensconced her neighbors Rusty and Katty Parker urged her to join the Greenwich Riding and Trails (GRTA). “I joined the GRTA board, my first, and got really involved because it was like going home to Minnesota. We had 150 trails in the middle of this town, 45 minutes out of New York City.”

Kim Gregory on right helping to attack invasive plants with Katty Parker on the trails of the Greenwich Riding and Trails Association. Contributed photo.

Having fallen in love with those trails Gregory was seeing the loss of back yard barns. “The more people that move out in New York City, the more barns come down, the more fences go up, the more the trails get broken up.” So, Gregory’s push was for GRTA to conserve. “And we really have become an organization focused on conservation.”
But, with her three children growing up, Gregory was seeing the growing disconnect between nature in this next generation. “I grew up on a farm. And I just know being connected to land makes you care about land.” Thus were her efforts to engage her kids in working on a farm for, “learning about the land. And this generation with their iPhones and their technology- they live on these devices. So often they’d rather sit and look at these devices and play Xbox, then go outside and take hikes.”
And so, Gregory was quick to move as a new member of the Greenwich Garden Club in creating Learning Gardens at Armstrong Court, “where the Headstart programs run, and a lot of those kids don’t have the opportunities that my kids have. They don’t have farms in Minnesota and little barns in Greenwich. On a weekly basis several times a week we bring the Headstart kids down and teach them about seeds and planting and biodiversity and pollinators. And the big thing is that our kids don’t know where our food comes from. There’s a huge disconnect from what they’re eating and having no idea how they get it to their table. I remember asking them what their favorite vegetable was, and they didn’t even know what a vegetable was.”
“The earlier you introduce these concepts,” says Gregory, “the more they are ingrained in the individual.” She praises the Audubon Center, where she serves on the board, for their Schoolyard Habitat program that teaches “how to stop using chemicals and do more pollinator friendly gardens.” But she’s sorry that funding ran out.
She sees too how quickly the private schools where her kids attended become “academic pressure cookers. Everybody’s so competitive, which is a good thing, but I think sometimes the balance is lost. I would say introducing these sustainability concepts and teaching kids where their food comes from as early as we can and getting them outside, I think is key. And if you can keep that going through middle school, and through high school, we can get these kids back engaged with nature.” And in choosing colleges she’s wishing their path would be towards botany and horticulture.

Kim Gregory receives Zone Conservation Award from the Garden Club of America for her Greenwich Garden Club work with members on their Greenwich Grown and Pollinator Projects. Contributed photo.

“We never had enough people working for the Forest Service, or in the Park Service. It’s always been an issue. We need kids to think I want to be a forest ranger. I want to be a park ranger. I want to be a Dan Brubaker [Greenwich Land Trust] and manage land and do research and figure out how to keep our ecosystem biodiverse. But it’s going to become a crisis because kids want to make money. Kids want to be in the gaming industry.
“We’re losing all of our great scientific minds. We look at Jane Goodall’s generation, and we really did have some great scientific minds doing some of this conservation work, but we’re not seeing the same feed of brain power going into it as there used to be.”
Joining the Greenwich Garden Club was a revelation for Gregory. “I thought it was like my mother in law’s white glove organization,” she shares. “Like, I’m in the barn and mucking stalls – I’m not going to dress up to go to meetings once a month.” She learned quickly that “the Garden Club of America is a huge legislative lobbying force in getting the Land and Water Act passed…They worked on it for decades.” She now sees legislation as “the way we really accomplish change.” But, no, she does not see herself as a legislator. But, with two kids out of the nest she’s mulling over what might be in her path.
For Gregory, growing up on a farm has been most formative. But even more formative was her Norwegian grandmother, Ingeborg. “She taught me you don’t waste anything. She grew up on a farm with nothing…She didn’t throw anything away. She repurposed everything. She made quilts out of old clothes. We ate every part of any animal slaughtered…She taught us that this cow gave its life, and you don’t waste it. And we’ve raised our kids hunting, but the rule in our house is you can never kill anything that you’re not going to eat – trophy hunting is totally off limits.”
Greenwich too has proved formative for Gregory. “We have so many smart people. We have so many great organizations, and we all work together. We all support each other. It takes a village. My kids are always like Mom, nothing we do is going to make a difference. But I say that’s not true. Every little thing all of us do makes a difference. And when we work together with everyone else, we’ll make change.”

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